FreedomDemocrats's blog

The Geography of Time

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 05:30:11 -0700

Interesting little presentation.

I recall that Austrian economist and anarcho-monarchist Hans-Hermann Hoppe got into some controversy as a professor talking about time preference and homosexuality due to technical inability to reproduce (outside of adoption). The discussion of time preference is supposed to be neutral, or that is at least how Zimbardo ends his presentation. But given that so much of our culture values wealth, its generation and hoarding, we tend to assume that a future oriented perspective is "superior." Certainly Zimbardo's discussion of present hedonistic time preference among our youth as a disaster has some clear moral connotations.

Zimbardo has a book out, "The Time Paradox" that seems to fall under the "self-help" genre. I don't know what could be gotten out of the book that the video doesn't provide, as the idea itself is rather simple and easy to grasp. It's the differences in how people develop these time preferences that would offer some interest to political theorists. Anyone who doesn't plan would be unlikely to push for long term political change, or even be well equipped to respond to long term challenges.

Designing for Totalitarianism

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 10:38:02 -0700

Vincent Ocasla, a young architecture student from the Philippines, has designed the perfect city for totalitarianism in Sim City 3000 with the largest possible population that sustains itself for 50,000 years. Impressive, but pretty darn scary.

State Politics

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 10:38:58 -0700

Andrew Gelman at FiveThirtyEight has a post up looking at the ideologies of both the general populace and partisans in the various states. These sorts of posts pop up from time to time and the trend is always the same. For the most part, social and economic views are correlated but not always as strongly as one might expect. But it's mildly interesting, so check it out.

Delaying the Great Reset

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:47:49 -0700

Congress is preparing to take up an Obama Administration proposal to establish a Small Business Lending Fund to help meet "unmet" small business demand for credit. The problem is that there's not really a supply-side problem with credit for small businesses right now, outside of construction and real estate. So we'd basically be throwing more money at small businesses at a subsidized rate, which is just going to help those who are already doing just fine. There are industry-specific problems facing the economy that need to be addressed. Sadly, Congress seems to be looking at a "solution" for that too.

Loan guarantees for homebuilders?!

I daresay that there are homebuilders out there who deserve loans they can’t get. But the same is true of other businesses too — businesses which create the vibrant sectors of tomorrow’s economy that ideally we really want to encourage, rather than crowd out. Banks aren’t going to lend more if this bill passes: they’re just going to shunt their lending from non-guaranteed sectors to homebuilding. And that can’t be good for the long-term health of the economy.

As for the unemployment problem, there’s no doubt that we want the people who have lost their jobs in the homebuilding sector to find new jobs as quickly as possible. But do we want those new jobs to be in the homebuilding sector? Not really. If we’re going to encourage job creation, let’s try to do it in areas of the economy which will help drive exports rather than imports, and which underpin a genuinely strong economy.

Actually, the problems facing homebuilders are industry-specific and most other small businesses are having their credit needs met. I don't know if one or both of these proposals will pass so it's hard to figure out the specific impact they would have, but neither one would have a meaningful positive impact. There are clear problem in trying to respond to the ongoing economic malaise with proposals to just prop up the industries that brought us down in the first place.

The difference between Germany and Spain, when you get down to it, is that Germans work for companies which provide goods and services that the rest of the world wants. In doing so, they make good money, which they save up. That’s how they became rich. The Spanish, by contrast, have massive unemployment, and most of the country’s GDP growth in recent years has come from the construction industry. Their main export is tourism, if that counts as an export, and the main way that Spaniards have become rich in recent years is by sitting back and watching the value of their real estate grow exponentially.

The U.S., going forwards, needs to be less like Spain and more like Germany. So let’s not subsidize housing. That way lies fiscal disaster.

Richard Florida has been calling this the Great Reset and compares it to how we recovered from past periods of economic woes. Over the next thirty years American consumption habits and lifestyles will shift and we'll see new industries develop and grow. I don't think we'll go back to the system in which ever rising home values and overleveraged credit fueled a consumer craze. If we do we'll probably have another burst bubble during a time of even greater fiscal crisis. That's not a good combination.

The Limits of Efficiency

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:16:31 -0700

Matt Ridley’s "The Rational Optimist" is out and although its sitting on my desk I haven't managed to find the time to start reading it yet. But I find Mike Gibson's review of the book a good place to start on reflecting about Ridley's underlining premise of the book that trade and specialization are the key factors in prosperity. But here I've often pointed out that trade and specialization will only get you so far, you also need innovation and new ideas. You need creativity. And these are two different things. The case behind trade, specialization, division of labor, and the greater economic wealth it creates is pretty solid. But the case behind what creates creativity and innovation is weaker because we haven't pinned down what makes one society more creative than another and how that translates into innovation and economic growth. Some can argue that it's cultural tolerance, but that's still a weak case that is only starting to build a movement behind it.

On the other hand, perhaps the case that trade and specialization are limited is overdone. Yglesias notes that the "miracle" that is China's economy is still largely attributed to specialization and changes in the economy that don't depend on innovation.

The basic story is that living standards ultimate derive from productivity, and there are two ways for an undeveloped country like China to obtain productivity growth. One is to simply shift people out of a low-productivity sector (like farming in China) and into a higher productivity sector (in China, factory labor). Another would be to actually raise the in-sector productivity by getting better at farming or manufacturing or what have you. In the specific case of China, it’s crucial to note that the productivity wedge between sweatshops and rice paddies is enormous which strongly suggests that a huge amount of what China’s achieved has been achieved through the former method. And with agriculture still employing over 35 percent of the Chinese labor force, there’s a great deal more China can achieve through this path. And it’s not a path I think should be slighted. Growth achieved through this method isn’t mythical—the higher living standards are very real. What is mythical, however, is the sense of the miraculous. For the reasons Krugman lays out, there’s nothing miraculous about this and there are real limits to how far you can go with it.

Israel Declares War On The World

Mon, 31 May 2010 13:08:43 -0700

I don't think there's any rational explanation of Israeli's behavior of the last few years. Demographic trends in Israel have fostered a radically xenophobic, racist, and nationalist right-wing approach to politics and an overly militant and aggressive treatment of the Palestinians. They are beyond the pale of reason. It would be utterly ridiculous if it weren't so deadly. It's like watching a nation run by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, but with the oppression and violence of apartheid South Africa--and worse.

Over the last few decades, Israel has been allowed to live by its own set of rules because it was seen as a bastion of western liberalism and democracy in the Middle East. An oasis in the desert, if you will. Israel's noncompliance with the NPT undermines the Obama Administration's efforts to discourage Iran from developing nuclear weapons and avoid a domino of Sunni regimes like Egypt or Saudi Arabia developing nuclear capabilities as well. Israel's defense, unchanged for years, is that it is the region's only democracy, which I guess puts Turkey in Europe and downgrades whatever success Iraq has made in recent years.

Israel is still operating with the Cold War mentality that it can do whatever it wants, like developing a secret nuclear weapons pact with apartheid South Africa. But in Europe and the United States, the Jewish diaspora has embraced the values of liberalism and equality to an extent that they no longer agree with a simple nationalist or Zionist defense of Israel. American Jews lean left, tend to be secularists, and support a more consistent application of human rights than a simple "Israel Good, Everyone Else Bad." Peter Beinart has chronicled this shift in his recent work that represents just the iceberg of changes in American Jewish about Israel.

Beinart himself represents not only this shift, but a shift in some of the "Organizational Kids" that David Brooks wrote about in analyzing trends in the types of people who get appointed to the Supreme Court.

About a decade ago, one began to notice a profusion of Organization Kids at elite college campuses. These were bright students who had been formed by the meritocratic system placed in front of them. They had great grades, perfect teacher recommendations, broad extracurricular interests, admirable self-confidence and winning personalities.

If they had any flaw, it was that they often had a professional and strategic attitude toward life. They were not intellectual risk-takers. They regarded professors as bosses to be pleased rather than authorities to be challenged. As one admissions director told me at the time, they were prudential rather than poetic.

Beinart has had a similar career background. As a supporter of the Iraq War and a general liberal-leaning hawk during the Bush Administration, he was the sort of centrist liberal that was supposed to be respectable under the conventional wisdom that had developed over the previous decades. But what has actually happened with Beinart? He's become increasingly disillusioned with the conventional wisdom that was handed down about what was necessary for America to be tough and strong on national defense. His latest book is a history of American hubris. How many other ruling elites today even think about America having hubris?

The conventional wisdom regarding Israel is being overturned, aided by Israel's own ever more extremist actions. Today, any opponent of actions by Israeli's right-wing government is cast as anti-Semitic. Any expression of support for the 1.5 million Palestinians living in poverty in Gaza is attacked as coddling terrorist Hamas. All of this doesn't bode well for Israel to survive as a democratic state.

Hillary Clinton in 2016?

Sun, 30 May 2010 16:08:45 -0700

Chris Bowers at Open Left presents a possible (potentially plausible?) scenario for Hillary's comeback.

That's right. Ever since she became Secretary of State, her favorables have soared into the mid-60's, putting her well clear of any other statewide officeholder in the country. The only national figures who are viewed as favorably as Clinton are Michelle Obama, Colin Powell, and David Patraeus. However, they have never run for office, which invariably lowers your favorables.

Hillary Clinton will turn 69 in in the final week of the 2016 campaign, which makes her slightly younger than Ronald Reagan when he first was elected in 1980. Also, as Secretary of State, a major presidential candidate, a U.S. Senator, and First Lady, she is also probably more credentialed than any other potential Presidential candidate, too. There is even talk she may become the next Secretary of Defense, further adding to her credentials.

Some have said that, in choosing Joe Biden as Vice-President, Barack Obama did not pick a successor to lead the Democratic Party. However, that needs rethinking. Because Barack obama made her Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton remains remarkably well-positioned to run for President in 2016, even more so than she was in 2008.

Pundits throughout the 2008 Democratic primary noted that the Obama-Clinton clashes were just the most recent incarnations of the inter-party battles between more upscale liberal activists and the downscale base of working class voters in the party. Unlike, say, the Kennedy-Carter or Hart-Mondale or Tsongas-Clinton or Bradley-Gore clashes of the past, Obama was able to tap into the African-American constituency that tended to affiliate with other working class Democrats to tip the scale narrowly in his favor. Up against anyone else, Hillary might be able to seize the nomination, despite the growing demographic trends in favor of the upscale faction.

Or maybe the advantage to Hillary is that eight years of Obama's corporatist compromises will so discourage liberal activists they won't even mount a serious effort for the nomination in 2016?

I have almost no doubt that if the Republican Party nominates someone with strong Tea Party appeal in 2012, such as Sarah Palin, and is defeated (which I think is almost certain), the party will almost certainly work toward compromise with the status quo. And I can't think of a Democratic candidate that would symbolize the continued communitarian trends within the party than Hillary Clinton. A showdown between Hillary and a moderate, corporatist Republican in 2016 would be the crowning achievement of the status quo's march toward a pink police state.

Ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Thu, 27 May 2010 18:44:17 -0700

Tonight, the Senate Armed Forces Committee approved an amendment to begin an end to the military's infamous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Only one Democrat, unfortunately Jim Webb of Virginia, opposed the amendment. Only one Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, supported the amendment. In the other chamber, the House of Representatives approved a similar measure to be attached to its annual defense authorizations bill to 234 to 194.

I noted both today and in the past that we are entering a communitarian phase of our ongoing culture war because of the heavy influence of government.

Is federal funding of abortion in a new government program a question of fairness and equity, or forcing taxpayers to support something they morally object to? Isn't not funding abortion in the new program a form of social engineering and restricting meaningful access to reproductive choice?

Or what about guns on National Parks? Does the 2nd Amendment compel the government to adopt a lenient policy, or should the government pick whatever policy they feel is best like any other property owner would?

Creationism or intelligence design in public schools? What about abstinence only education? Or sex education? Multicultural studies?

The common theme is that these are questions brought about by other government programs, be they public lands, social services, or public education. In each the government has to make a decision because it's providing a service or a good. Without our existing framework there is no option for the government to somehow stay neutral by not making a decision. And so libertarians will be divided between those who argue that the government shouldn't favor a certain perspective, such as evolution in the classroom, and those who argue that if the government is going to provide these services at all they should at least embrace science.

It is going to get nasty over the next few years, if not decades, as the older generation of predominately white Christians gives way to a less-white and less-Christian population.

I personally affiliate with much of the liberal, secular agenda of the Democratic Party. But in understanding the difficulties created by our communitarian politics I haven't wanted to push the issue--too much. Ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" isn't one of those times. Yes, the conservatives opposed to equality in the military claim it's social engineering. And I respect that argument--sometimes. Not this time.

This vote shows that while you can criticize the Democrats for failing to reverse all of the neoconservative agenda that was pushed under Bush, from the erosion to civil liberties to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, you can at least count on them to cling to a degree decency on some issues of social equity and fairness. It's not much, but it's worth celebrating nevertheless.

Update: The vote has been posted online. Key notes. The Republicans who voted for the amendment: Biggert of Illinois, Cao of Louisiana, Djou of Hawaii (the newest member!), Paul of Texas, and Ros-Lehtinen of Florida (of anti-Castro and pro-embargo fame).

Of the Democrats who voted against only one, Costello of Illinois, had voted against renewing the Patriot Act and in favor of an exit strategy in Afghanistan. The rest are the usual suspects of conservative Democrats.

Remember Butch Otter?

Wed, 26 May 2010 17:05:16 -0700

You remember him, the libertarian Republican? This guy. Ever wonder what happened to him? Well here's an update.

Of Otter's GOP challengers, the two best known were Ada County Commissioner Sharon Ullman and former elk rancher Rex Rammell from Rexburg. Both courted voters from the tea party movement, making hay of Otter's failed 2009 push to raise Idaho's gas tax.

Imagine that. The libertarian Republican Governor pushing for an increase in the gas tax and facing off against Tea Party opposition. Oh how times have changed.

Changing Incentives, Not Thoughts

Sun, 23 May 2010 14:30:36 -0700

By focusing on a range of issues from regulatory capture to collective action, I try to highlight over and over again that the problem with democracy isn't to blame irrational and uneducated masses (a response that smacks of the elitism of the 19th Century Mugwumps that I just blogged about) but the need to change the incentives in the institutions that are failing to govern. I just added the blog "Let a Thousand Nations Bloom" to the links on the right and several of the posts there touch on this subject. For example, this take down of public choice theorists who just think that education will solve all of democracies problems.

On Liberalism . . .

Sun, 23 May 2010 14:29:06 -0700

New working post on liberalism is also up. Feedbacks welcome.

Are all libertarians classical liberals?

In the American context, most libertarians will talk about a tradition of liberty and limited government based on principles we inherited from Britain. Not only does this include the broader rhetoric of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but specific developments like habeas corpus, trial by jury, and the common law. The idea is that loyally following these principles will promote a free and prosperous society. Deviation from these principles represents a decline in our liberty and a descent into serfdom. Some self-described libertarians or classical liberals argue that the United States enjoyed a golden age of liberty during the 19th century and we are now worse off for having deviated from this founding principles enshrined in the Constitution.

At FreedomDemocrats.org, we take a slightly different perspective on British and American liberty. We embrace the term libertarian as a way to distinguish our views from those who call themselves classical liberals based on the Anglo-American tradition. After the Glorious Revolution, a system that can be best described as "administrative anarchy" hindered the British state and its ability to govern the lives of its subjects in a way that France and other continental powers did. Not only did Britain lack a large bureaucracy to carry out the will of the government, it adopted a very efficient method of taxation following its wars against France in the late 17th Century and early 18th Century. As a result of high taxes on imported French spirits, British domestic production grew and provided substantial revenues to the state through excise taxes. This created a system similar to value added taxes that are born by consumers and allowed Britain to collect resources without creating too much of a drain on the economy as a whole. Britain did not develop a large professional civil service that would enable it to closely monitor and regulate the actions of its people. The result, a relatively free and prosperous Britain, was largely an accidental and secondary development. In fact, British liberalism had many structural failures that over time showed itself to be ill-suited to the cause of limited government. Unlike anarchism, which sees no role for the state, liberalism accepted that there were some situations in which the state had a role to play. But liberalism did not have a strong philosophy explaining when and where this was necessary and when and where an expanded role for the state was unnecessary. Over time, this created a slippery slope in which each new generation adds to the responsibilities of the state and existing programs are not repealed or reformed.

In the United States, FreedomDemocrats.org disagrees with the mythology of the Constitution an ideal representation of limited government or libertarianism. We agree with other high profile libertarians who have criticized the nostalgia of a "golden age of lost liberty" that never really existed, especially for women and racial minorities. The American political figures involved in the Revolution and the writing of the Constitution had concerns beyond just limited government and the emerging liberal thought of the day. They shared a republican mindset that stressed the importance of avoiding corruption in government and mob-ruled that produced politics driven by emotion and not reason or logic. These concerns produced a government with separation of powers, a federalist division of power and authority between a national government and the states, staggered terms for the Representatives, Senators, and President, and a Supreme Court with lifetime appointment. While this system works to reduce the ability of popular majorities to radically alter government, which was a primary concern for the Founding Fathers, it has not done much over the long term to reduce inequalities in access to state power and prevent a continued collusion between the state and the wealthy elite.

As libertarian Democrats, aren't you just apologists for big government liberalism?

As libertarian Democrats, FreedomDemocrats.org is organized around the belief that the best chance for a freer America is through the Democratic Party and not the Republican Party or a third-party effort. We are ultimately opposed to organizing through the Republican Party because we believe it is irredeemably corrupted by the two greatest threats to liberty: the social, cultural, and religious oppression promoted by the "Religious Right" and the corrupting influence of wealthy special interests groups ranging from Wall Street to war contractors to Big Oil. And we recognize that the current political system in the United States favors a two-party system, even if we disagree with the fairness behind this outcome. But by viewing the Democratic Party as the last, best hope for liberty we are not, however, apologists for any and all Democrats and the policies individual Democratic politicians may support. We can and will voice our disagreements with President Obama and the Democratic Congress.

Revisiting the Mugwumps

Sun, 23 May 2010 12:11:25 -0700

The Mugwumps, the reform oriented liberal Republicans who would bolt to Democrats such as Grover Cleveland during the Gilded Age, are a common point of discussion for this blog (see here, for example). But a collection of essays on the Reconstruction Era by Michael Benedict called "Preserving the Constitution" provides an interesting departure from the conventional wisdom about the Mugwumps and their reform oriented agenda.

indeed, much of the shape of factional politics in the 1860s and 1870s can best be understood in terms of Michels's "iron law of oligarchy" and related ideas. That rule posits that as a party becomes institutionalized, its leaders will begin to use their power over it for their own ends and will concentrate their energies on retaining that power. AS aspiring leaders find the route to important positions closed, they begin to organize to oust the old guard, often under the banner of "reform," only to form an oligarchy themselves if successful.

If one expands that understanding to recognize that those who have lost struggles for power to the "oligarchy" will join the effort, then it seems to apply precisely to the "reform" campaigns of the late 1860s through the 1880s.

. . .

The demands made by "reform" Republicans that their party abandon the "dead" issues of the Civil War in favor of financial, tariff, and civil service reform offer a fine illustration of the link between issues and factional ambition. As already noted, "reform" ranks were made up largely of men who either had lost factional struggles or aspired to influence but were denied it. They understood full well that the dominant leaders of the Republican Party had achieved power through the related issues of slavery, emancipation, saving the Union, and Reconstruction. So long as these issues remained the central concern of the Republican Party, those identified with them were bound to retain their leadership positions.

Historians often write that the North and the Republican Party "gave up" on Reconstruction without fully addressing why. Left unaddressed is how internal politics within the Republican Party between the establishment that had won the Civil War and challengers who were trying to gain power and status through raising new issues. Even before Liberal Republicans bolted in the election of 1872, inter-Republican squabbles over monetary policy drove a wedge between reformers and radical, a split that was used to the advantage of conservative Republicans.

Reformers, adopting a laissez faire ideology, were also worried by radical support for land confiscation and redistribution in the South.

When radical Ben Butler justified such a policy on the grounds that a "landed aristocracy is fatal to the advance of the cause of liberty and equal rights," the hitherto sympathetic, reformer-linked Boston Advertiser asked, "Why a landed aristocracy? This mode of argument is two-edged. For these are socialist who hold that any aristocracy is 'fatal to the advance of the cause of equal rights.'"

Don't forget that during the late 1860s and beyond the rise of socialist parties and organizations in Europe cast a shadow on America that drove the fears of the elitist reformers. Unlike in the North, Republicans openly campaigned in the South for the support of former slaves. Reformers, elitist and openly hostile to the political machines in the urban North based on the immigrant population, were equally fearful of political machines in the South based on the votes of former slaves. Charles Francis Adams Jr. spoke for many reformers when he voiced concern at a "Celtic proletariat on the Atlantic coast, an African proletariat on the shores of the Gulf, and a Chinese proletariat on the Pacific."

History is written by the victors, and there's a tendency in American politics to focus on the "best" about groups that we look back on with pride, such as the Gilded Age reformers who pushed for civil service reform and driving corruption out of politics. It's no wonder that they have a special place in history as they express the decidedly anti-partisan views that the Washington consensus favors today, the sort of "centrism" that you'll only find among the elite class. By focusing on their reform agenda, and not the role they played in ending Northern support for Reconstruction, historians are able to assign blame to the public for the century of Jim Crow and segregation that followed, not he political strategies of their forebears.

Gary Johnson in 2012?

Thu, 20 May 2010 17:20:27 -0700

Rojas at The Crossed Pond speculates about a Gary Johnson campaign in 2012 as a bridge to Rand Paul in 2016.

Speculation regarding the 2016 cycle is massively overblown, particularly given that the candidate in question has every chance to lose his Senate campaign. But I’m immensely encouraged by this scenario for 2012. Johnson is a wonderful evolutionary step for the movement; it ceases to be seen as a cult of personality, and it makes permanent the presence of libertarianism at the highest levels of Republican politics. It also etches in stone Ron Paul’s legacy and ensures that the memory of his campaign will not be tarnished the way, for instance, Perot’s has been. Let it be done!

I'm in agreement about Johnson running as a positive step. First, it breaks the Paul-mania that has developed around Ron and Rand. Second, Johnson comes from a Western tradition where, I believe, he's less likely to have the crypto-racism baggage of a Ron and Rand. Johnson, for example, has said he would have vetoed the recently signed into law in Arizona that essentially legalizing racial profiling and intimidating of minorities. It would be nice to have a libertarian running for President who doesn't step into controversy over race. You know?

New Posts

Thu, 20 May 2010 13:03:40 -0700

I've modified the page on anarchism a bit and I've expanded (hopefully to its completion) the page on libertarianism. Let me know what you think. For your benefit, I'm posting the page on libertarianism:

What type of libertarians are you?

Libertarianism has a lot of baggage attached to it, particularly when talking to other political Leftists. Many Leftists would strongly disagree that libertarianism even belongs on the Left. At FreedomDemocrats.org, we consider ourselves both members of the Left and libertarians. The origins of libertarianism as a radical anti-conservative and anti-establishment ideology are deeply rooted in Leftist politics. But we are not out to defend any and all people who describe themselves as libertarian. In fact, you will often see us describe apologists of big corporations as "vulgar libertarians" who use the rhetoric of freedom and liberty to defend a conservative order of inequality and hierarchy.

In many ways, FreedomDemocrats.org uses the phrase "libertarian" as a replacement for "pragmatic anarchist." Given the close association of anarchism and libertarianism in European history, our community focuses on the same goals of social equality and liberty that the Left has always focused on. Unlike anarchism, we do not advocate outright abolition of the state as we view the state as an inevitable byproduct of limited land and natural resources. But we do share with anarchism the goals of creating strong voluntary and cooperative institutions to counterbalance the state. By accepting the existence of the state, we locate ourselves in a diverse political tradition of radical Leftists, from libertarians to liberals, that offer strong critiques of the state as a tool for conservative oppression and the creation of inequality even while they fall short of the anarchist position of advocating for the abolition of the state. We affiliate with the tradition of libertarianism from its French and other European origins as a radical critique of the state and not with a "classical liberalism" that seeks to return to some golden age of Anglo-American liberty based on the common law and associated views of the state.

You've lost me . . .

The word libertarian actually originates from Left-leaning anarchist schools of thought in France during the 19th Century. Following the failures of the French Revolution, Leftists began to question the very existence of the state itself. One of the first self-described anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was criticized by a fellow French thinker, Joseph Déjacque, for his anti-feminist views despite his Leftist leanings and opposition to state coercion. In a letter to Proudhon in 1857, Déjacque said that Proudhon's opposition to both the state and feminism was "libéral et non LIBERTAIRE" or "liberal but not LIBERTARIAN." Déjacque was noting that while Proudhon was a liberal in that he was an opponent of conservatism and on the Left-wing of the political spectrum, his support of social and cultural oppression of women meant that he was not a true supporter of liberty. FreedomDemocrats.org continues to use the phrase libertarian to describe our politics as liberal AND libertarian, opposed to both conservatism as statist oppression and as cultural oppression. And the term libertarian defines us as independent from those who use the term classical liberalism and draw on a a specifically Anglo-American view of liberty and limited government.

Although libertarians often turn to the Founding Fathers as heros, we question this mythology of the Constitution an idea for liberty. We welcome other high profile libertarians who have criticized the nostalgia of some libertarians for a "golden age of lost liberty" that never really existed. We welcome input from New Left historians who have revisited past eras to document past periods in which the rich and the few used the powers of the government for personal profit, such as waging war against neighboring countries and the native inhabitants of the west in order to expand land available for slavery and Anglo-American settlers. We recognize that the myth of a "golden age of lost liberty" in Great Britain reflects an era of "administrative anarchy" following the the Glorious Revolution that kept the British people relatively free because of the ineffectiveness of Britain's antiquated and understaffed government. The modernization of the law by liberals, and the professional civil service that came with it, ultimately undermined this accidental liberty.

So what does your libertarian approach mean?

By drawing on the work of French Leftists, discussions at FreedomDemocrats.org will often focus on the role and importance of class in our political system. Ironically, many of Karl Marx's ideas on class and class conflict originated from earlier works by French liberals such as Charles Comte, Charles Dunoyer, Augustin Thierry, Jean-Baptiste Say and Adolphe Blanqui. To these early French liberals, society as divided into two classes, a productive class and an unproductive class. While this rhetoric is commonly used by modern American conservatives, the irony is that the unproductive classes according to Say and others were the the military, the nobility, and the state-supported church. These groups were the very base of conservatism in Europe and supporters of the Old Regime against liberalism. Today, American conservatives claim that the the unproductive classes are low-income workers struggling to survive or undocumented workers picking lettuce in the Southwest, and defend the true unproductive classes, such as the wealthy elites of society who have been bailed out at taxpayer expense or the military contractors profiting from war.

In all the revolutions, there have always been but two parties opposing each other; that of the people who wish to live by their own labor, and that of those who would live by the labor of others. . . . Patricians and plebeians, slaves and freemen, guelphs and ghibellines, red roses and white roses, cavaliers and roundheads, liberals and serviles, are only varieties of the same species.
~~Adolphe Blanqui~~

Learning From Regulatory Capture

Thu, 20 May 2010 07:11:12 -0700

The ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the failure of federal agencies to properly regulate the oil companies and their drilling activities is just one more example of regulatory capture.

We heard it after the banking regulators sat cluelessly through the financial crisis. We heard a version of it about the Securities and Exchange Commission, with its "voluntary supervision" program for investment bank holding companies. We heard a slightly different iteration about the Office of Thrift Supervision, whose director once referred to the CEO of Washington Mutual as "my largest constituent assetwise." A few years back, the same narrative described what was going on at the Department of the Interior, which had become lobbyist Jack Abramoff's playground. And what had happened at the Food and Drug Administration, which had virtually been transformed into an arm of Big Pharma. And at OSHA. And at the Federal Aviation Administration. Always the account followed the same pattern: Self-regulation. Voluntary oversight. Regulators who regard industry as their client, their customer, their constituent. Regulators who take jobs as lobbyists. Lobbyists who take jobs as regulators. Prosecutions brought down almost to zero. Good times for everyone. And, at the end of the story: colossal scams, tainted food, environmental catastrophe, economic disaster.

Regulatory capture is a strong criticism of trusting government agencies to produce the results you expect of them. But it's just poking holes in someone else's arguments. What proactive proposals could libertarians get behind to address regulatory capture? Aside from trying to reduce regulations and promote desirable outcomes through choice and competition, could changes be made to how agencies are structured to improve their performance?